THE SAGE AND THE WOMAN

‘ TWIXT ancient Beersheba and Dan

Another such a caravan

Dazed Palestine had never seen

As that which bore Sabea's queen

Up from the fain and flaming South

To slake her yearning spirit's drouth

At wisdom's pools, with Solomon.

With gifts of scented sandalwood,

And labdanum, and cassia-bud,

With spicy spoils of Araby

And camel-loads of ivory

And heavy cloths that glanced and shone

With inwrought pearl and beryl-stone

She came, a bold Sabean girl.

And did she find him grave, or gay?

Perchance his palace breathed that day

With psalters sounding solemnly —

Or cymbals’ merrier minstrelsy —

Perchance the wearied monarch heard

Some loose-tongued prophet's meddling word;—

None knows, no one — but Solomon!

She looked — with eyne wherein were blent

All ardors of the Orient;

She spake — all magics of the South

Were compassed in the witch's mouth;—

He thought the scarlet lips of her

More precious than En Gedi's myrrh,

The lips of that Sabean girl;

By many an amorous sun caressed,

From lifted brow to amber breast

She gleamed in vivid loveliness —

And lithe as any leopardess —

And verily, one blames thee not

If thine own proverbs were forgot,

O Solomon, wise Solomon!

She danced for him, and surely she

Learnt dancing from some moonlit sea

Where elfin vapors swirled and swayed

While the wild pipes of witchcraft played

Such clutching music‘ twould impel

A prophet's self to dance to hell —

So spun the light Sabean girl.

He swore her laughter had the lilt

Of chiming waters that are spilt

In sprays of spurted melody

From founts of carven porphyry,

And in the billowy turbulence

Of her dusk hair drowned soul and sense —

Dark tides and deep, O Solomon!

Perchance unto her day belongs

His poem called the Song of Songs,

Each little lyric interval

Timed to her pulse's rise and fall;—

Or when he cried out wearily

That all things end in vanity

Did he mean that Sabean girl?

The bright barbaric opulence,

The sun-kist Temple, Kedar's tents,—

How many a careless caravan

‘ Twixt Beersheba and ruined Dan,

Within these forty centuries,

Has flung their dust to many a breeze,

With dust that was King Solomon!

But still the lesson holds as true,

O King, as when she lessoned you:

That very wise men are not wise

Until they read in Folly's eyes

The wisdom that escapes the schools,

That bids the sage revise his rules

By light of some Sabean girl!